Something that has been bothering me lately

[The Sleeper]

google rules

from <!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.lns.cornell.edu/spr/2000-01/msg0021065.html">http://www.lns.cornell.edu/spr/2000-01/msg0021065.html</a><!-- m -->

DL AMES 2 wrote in message <[email protected]>...
Can someone please explain to me how I can convert O2 into just (O) and
also convert it to O4 & O5. O3 is easy, but the other derivitives I am not clear on. Also, I would like to know if the oxygen that is used for welding purposes is just (O) or O2?

Normal, stable oxygen (including that for welding) is almost pure O2.
To my knowledge, O3 is the only other form stable enough to produce
in macroscopic concentrations (e.g., ~2% is used industrially for
bleaching and disinfecting). One can obviously disassociate O2
in a laboratory -- in an arc, say -- but it will reform O2 under "normal"
(earth-like) conditions of temperature and pressure. Personally, I've
never heard of O4 and O5, but there are all sorts of bizarre molecules
that are transiently produced under some conditions, so I won't try
to claim that they don't exist. - Roy